Artez online fundraising and EU cookie law

For clients, donors and fundraisers using the Artez online fundraising service, we wanted to share the Artez policy on cookies for EU markets, along with information about how Artez uses cookies and the purpose of each.

Artez Policy regarding Cookies for EU Markets (April 2012)

1. Session Cookies employed within the Artez System are strictly necessary to perform the function that the user intended. The Artez Friendship Powered Fundraising System uses Session Cookies. Session Cookies are only used to assist donors and/or individual fundraisers to complete the actions that they intended to perform within the Artez Platform such as donating to a cause or registering for a fundraising event. Session Cookies expire at the end of each user session and no personal information is stored within the Artez system.

2. The Artez Privacy Policy has been updated with wording that makes the Artez position clear on how Cookies are used on the Artez platform.

3. Artez uses 3^rd party Programs that employ Cookies. As of April 2012, the 3^rd party products are Google Analytics, AddThis and Facebook. Clients using the Artez platform have the option to turn on or turn off these features. Artez does not know definitively if these programs contravene the act. It is Artez’s opinion that clients of the Artez platform should be alerted to this by Rapidata and they can then make their own determination on this matter.

Description of Artez Cookies Used and Purpose of Each

• utma - stores each user’s amount of visits and the time of the first and subsequent visits
• utmb and utmc: used to check approximately how long you stay on a site: when a visit starts, and approximately ends
• utmz: stores where a visitor came from (search engine, search keyword, link)
• session_id: lasts only for the duration of your visit to the website
• CSRF-Token: session based cookie used to protect against CSRF (Cross Site Request Forgery)
• BIGipServerArtezglobalSecure_Pool: session based cookie used by our load balancing hardware to maintain server persistence during a user session

Questions?

Should you have any questions or concerns regarding Artez cookies and how you can comply with the EU cookie directive, please contact Amy McGeever on 01293 601111 or amcgeever@rapidata.co.uk

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Online events fundraising made easier with Facebook registration

Learn how our great new ‘Register with Facebook’ feature makes online fundraising easier for your events participants.

Rapidata’s Artez clients can now use a great new Single Sign On feature that allows your event participants to register quickly and easily using their Facebook accounts. They can also come back to your site and log into their fundraising accounts with their Facebook login.

That’s one less username and password to remember!

Here’s how your event participants can Register with Facebook:

New registrants will see a Facebook icon as an option for signing up for your event. Participants that choose Facebook for registration will be prompted to log into Facebook.

Once registrants have logged into Facebook, they will be directed back to the next step of registration. Depending on your event settings, participants may be asked to choose a location, or create a team.

Connecting with Facebook allows information like name, email, or address details to pre-populate into the Contact Information page fields during registration. Which pieces of information will pre-populate will always depend on Facebook security settings of individual users. No confidential or personal information is shared with Facebook or accessed from Facebook without a user’s permission.

After a successful registration:

When the registration process is completed, event participants are taken directly inside their fundraising consoles. Participants may choose “Disconnect” to log-out of Facebook while inside an event’s fundraising console.

Event participants who have registered without using Facebook will also see an option inside their fundraising consoles allowing them to associate their Facebook account with their Artez account at any time.

How to I enable ‘Register with Facebook’ on my event?

Setting up this feature takes just a couple minutes – all you will need are the Facebook log in details for your organisation or your event. Our dedicated Client Support Team can walk you through the set up. Just send an email to support@rapidata.co.uk or call the Support Desk on 01293 601110.

This is just one of several new enhancements and there are more on the way to help charities maximise their online fundraising Income. If you are not using our online fundraising service and would like to know more, please contact Amy McGeever on 01293 601111 or amcgeever@rapidata.co.uk

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Whats new in the January 2012 online fundraising release

We’re excited to tell you about about the upcoming release of the Artez online fundraising system.

This update is full of new web, social and mobile fundraising features to enhance your online fundraising.

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What’s new in the September Online Fundraising release?

It’s always great to report on what’s new in the Artez Online Fundraising Service released in September 2011 (release 150).

Here are some of the main highlights:

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Getting mobile donations right

Earlier this month the Rapidata team attended the Institute of Fundraising National Convention. This year’s conference was fantastic – attendee numbers were up, there was a huge variety of vendors at the expo and most importantly the quality and variety of seminars was really impressive. Since we launched our mobile fundraising app at the IoF and because we’re slightly obsessed with our own mobile phones, our team attended a lot of mobile and SMS giving seminars.

It was really interesting to find out how the sector is experimenting with SMS and mobile giving. One of the most common ways of leveraging SMS technology is via text campaigns that don’t include a fundraising ask. The examples given covered everything from asking people to text their support for a campaign to signing a petition, requesting more information, voting and more. Supporters who texted a reply were contacted via phone and asked to sign up as regular monthly donors. Most charities reported a 10% conversion rate from these calls and fairly low acquisition costs.

I think this is a great example of how to combine SMS communications with donor acquisition, but what are charities doing to make that process simpler? Will supporters make a gift via their smartphone if a donation site is sent to them via SMS? Does your charity offer supporters a quick and easy way to give online from their smartphone? How can charities convert more of these supporters to donors – particularly the ones who didn’t answer their phone when called?

In December 2010, a New York based charity called City Harvest tested QR codes on their print ads. When a supporter scanned the QR code with their smartphone they were redirected to a mobile optimised page that gave them 4 options; watch a video about the charity’s work, donate online, donate by phone and learn more about the charity.  It’s a great campaign – but they missed a trick! Their donation form was not mobile optimised. It’s hard to use, hard to see and even the branding was vague.

Sadly, not that many charities have mobile friendly pages on their website.  In fact, one presenter from the National Convention told us that only 16% of non-profits were planning mobile friendly pages on their website in 2011/12*.

It’s actually pretty easy to convert some key pages on your website to a mobile optimise version – although this does depend heavily on your website platform.

The key pages you should optimise are your donate now page, contact page, what we do/how you can help page, and maybe some video or image to bring your organisation’s role to life.

Rapidata launched mobile optimised donation pages last year to all of our clients. Now whenever a donation page is created on our platform, a mobile friendly version is automatically created too. Now you might be wondering what that looks like – well in a nutshell, the page is styled to fit nicely into a very small screen, the fields are easy to navigate and you don’t have to mess around with lots of extra questions. And we can incorporate PayPal as a payment option alongside all the standard cards (40% of PayPal donations to Red Nose Day were via an iPhone in 2011**). Our mobile donation pages are short, to the point, easy to use and our client’s branding is front and centre as always.

The best part about our mobile donation tool is that you can create multiple donation pages, each with a different look and feel to reflect your campaigns. And you don’t need to manage multiple online giving platforms. All your data is one place allowing you to track donor behaviour, find out who’s giving via their mobile, keep track of gift aid declarations and more.

Is your organisation planning an SMS or mobile giving campaign? Is your organisation planning on leveraging the power of mobile to raise funds?  I’d love to hear about it! Please get in touch by leaving a comment below or email abono@rapidata.co.uk.

If you would like more information about mobile giving, please get in touch by emailing info@rapidata.co.uk or call 01293 524066

For more information about the potential of mobile phones for charities and non-profits, please click here to view nfp Synergy’s report.

* Using Mobile to Raise Money & Friends, Institute of Fundraising National Convention, 2011
** Making the Most of SMS Fundraising, Institute of Fundraising National Convention, 2011

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Institute of Fundraising National Convention 2011

…It’s all about you!

That’s the tag line for this year’s Institute of Fundraising National Convention 2011 taking place at the start of July.

Rapidata is pleased to be exhibiting and supporting the Convention for our eighth year. With the release of our third annual Charity Direct Debit Tracking Report and our recent iPhone and Android fundraising App, there are lots of new developments to come and see us about! As a Bacs Approved Bureau, we will of course also be on hand to help answer any Direct Debit, Auddis, Unpaid or Paperless Direct Debit questions you may have.

We are also pleased to be one of the few exhibitors signed up to the Institute of Fundraising early bird reward scheme, giving someone the lucky chance to win tea for two at the Ritz!

We will be on STAND 27, so please come and have a chat over a coffee, so we can all share and learn what the latest developments and requirements in fundraising are. If you would like to arrange a one to one meeting during the three days, please drop us a line info@rapidata.co.uk or call us on 01293 524066 and we will schedule it in.

For more information about the Convention, please click on the link below:

http://www.nationalconvention.org.uk/

We look forward to seeing you there.

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What’s new in the Artez Spring release?

The Artez Spring release (release 150) is now live. If you haven’t already seen the latest and greatest tools inside your Artez account, then login and check out the updates today.

There are lots of exciting goodies, but we’re especially excited about all the enhanced Facebook Connect and mobile web pages for your runs, walks, rides and campaigns.

What are the new features?
- Upgraded Facebook Connect tools
- Facebook “Like” button on your Artez pages
- Enhanced mobile event and donation pages for Smartphone browsers
- Enhanced E-Card layout options
- New donor management tools for administrators

To see a full list of enhancements, please check your inbox for the latest release notes or login to the Artez Client Resource Centre.

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A Canadian affair…Rapidata visits Artez Interactive

Our support team paid a visit to our friends at Artez Interactive last week. It was a jam packed training session that ran the gamut from Google Analytics to Webservices and Mobile Apps. All in all a fantastic week. Most importantly Daragh got to meet the team who make all the magic happen. Later today we’ll be posting details about the latest Artez release, so watch this space! In the meantime, check out the fantastic group photo below:

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Artez Webinars – Catering to Corporates

Our friends at Artez are offering a great line up of free seminars this Spring.

These fast-paced 30 minute sessions are focused on bringing you ideas and resources to help you become a better fundraiser.  Artez’s webinars offer expert interviews, how-to sessions, trends, news, ideas, opinions and much more.

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Snapshot report update

Good news for Artez platform users! The Snapshot report has had an update – the first of many report related updates that we will be bringing you this summer.

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